WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 (UPI) -- Over a decade after the Berlin Wall fell, the United States government has failed to implement a new strategic framework to cope with post-Cold War realities, according to a recent study. As a result, the federal government is ill prepared to confront a welter of economic and homeland security threats ranging from terrorist attacks, to energy crises, to world financial turmoil.
"The all-encompassing Soviet threat has given way to an era of complex, fragmented, multifaceted risks with compounding uncertainties," the study notes, "but no new organizational structures or effective consensus exist to protect long-range U.S. interests."
Written under the aegis of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C., the report represents the work of a broad range of strategic policy experts that began two years ago -- itself an illustration of how a number of government watchdogs have had longstanding concerns about the U.S. ability to adapt to new world security problems.
But with the Sept. 11 attacks, the issue of strategic reform has taken on new urgency. 'We are in a dramatically new threat environment -- a strategic reversal from the Cold War -- and we have not fully re-equipped and re-organized ourselves to develop critical anticipatory and agile capabilities," writes David Abshire, president of CSP.
The key to any new security framework, the CSP says, should be an ability to respond quickly to emerging threats: "The purpose of agility is to go beyond our defense capabilities so as to shape the strategic environment, rather than respond to it," says the report.
This will primarily be achieved through a federal government active on both domestic and international fronts -- an approach the Bush administration had previously avoided. In response to the September 11 attacks, however, the White House has moved quickly to forge diplomatic alliances, retool federal government operations and request broader security measures.
The study recommends the creation of new presidential advisory boards that would bring together the public and private sectors. The board "would provide an avenue for leaders of successful private sector corporations, academic institutions, as well as individuals with particular experience in national security, to bring to the government the knowledge and foresight with which they lead their respective industries and disciplines."
Such a body could stimulate government officials to "think outside the box" on an array of problems. CSP also recommends that Congress create a "Joint Strategic Committee" to work with the executive branch on implementing new security strategies.
Ironically, the U.S. can draw on lessons from the Cold War to vastly overhaul government institutions and operations, the study says. In 1946, months after the end of WW II, President Harry S. Truman moved quickly to restructure the country's foreign and defense capabilities. At home, he created national security apparatuses such as the National Security Council, the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Science Foundation. Abroad, Truman forged international alliances via the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
As the Cold War landscape emerged in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower also sought major strategic changes, but this time in the policy realm. "Although the structures had been built, the grand strategy had not been crafted," the report explains. Just four months into office, Eisenhower convened his "Solarium Exercise," a congress of three diverse schools of thought regarding America's strategic stance toward the Soviet Union. Out of this strategic planning initiative came the basic U.S. framework that governed the Cold War.
The difficulties for Bush may be greater, however, because both structure and policy reforms are needed. What's more, increased globalization has rendered the American economy more vulnerable than in the past. "Financial power and military strength are equally important pillars of U.S. national security, and our economic security is unavoidably bound up with the fate of the global economy," says the CSP report.
Though the president directed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to conduct a review aimed at reforming the military--and though only half of Bush's political appointees have been confirmed--the reform net must be cast wider to include a number of Cabinet-level agencies, according to CSP.
"Only the Pentagon is undertaking radical reviews, when, at a minimum, a strategic rooftop needs to include the NSC, State Department, Treasury, Justice, Commerce, Energy, Health and Human Services, CIA, [United States Trade Representative], and [Federal Emergency Management Agency]," says the report.
It concludes that: "The time has come for the new Administration to think in even larger terms, to engage in strategic transformation creatively and formulate a broad strategic appraisal with a vision to help build support for the overall reforms."
